Lessons Learned from my First Business Aged 13
As with your next business, my first business started because of a need amongst my friends. We always used to want to buy the latest computer games but before the internet you had to wait for a month before the magazines like Crash or Amiga Format came out with reviews so you could see if the game you wanted was any good or not. You could just buy a game without reading a review, but more times than not it would be terrible and you’d wasted your hard earned pocket money.
I figured that we could write a review “fanzine” ourselves, timed to come out in the gap between issues of the big magazines with much quicker reviews, hence we called it “PREview” that I sold for 20 pence a copy.
Things actually went quite well, I sold it in the school bookshop (just asked the teacher!) and word of mouth amongst friends. By the time I wound it up I’d made enough money to buy myself a colour TV! In those days that was quite a big thing. Not to mention game companies had started sending me games to review. I had to send them back though.
But I learned a lot of things in this first business:
Peope will pay for something that will save them money
It’s much easier to sell something where you can give a definite price on how much it saves you. PREview cost 20p but it could save you wasting a whole 9.99 on a bad game!
Ignore the naysayers
I was selling the magazine at a schoolmate’s dad’s computer shop. I’m not sure how I managed this, I think I must just have asked. Anyway as usually happens when somebody starts doing something well the naysayers start getting jealous. This school mate came in one day shouting to everyone “Ha, we had a customer come in yesterday, he picked up Richard’s fanzine and thought it was free! He didn’t think it was worth 20p! HA HA!” Of course all of his mates were lapping this up. And some of my friends who were working on the magazine got a bit down by it. But I wasn’t bothered at all. My feeling was, yeah but other people are buying it at 20p! That says much more than one person who doesn’t. You’re never going to be able to please everyone. Isn’t that the famous Bill Crosby quote? “I can’t tell you the path to success. But the path to failure is to try and please all the people all the time”.
Positive people do positive things.
Everyone who has ever done anything in this world was a positive person. Otherwise they wouldn’t have done the things they have! Ignore the negative people. Surround yourself with people are are actually getting on and doing things.
Great people talk about ideas.
Average people talk about things
Small people talk about other people.
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Having said that …
Technology always lets you down
In the beginning the magazine was photocopied. This was real copy and paste with glue and sellotape and a master copy that looked something from Indiana Jones’ Diary with all the bits taped and stuck on it. Then I heard about a new way of colour printing. That sounded cool! Of course before the internet you couldn’t check things out online, so I asked lots of questions and it seemed legit. So I started promoting that from next month we’d be in full colour! I told everyone. Then I found how how the system works, you have to hand copy over the master using a series of coloured carbon papers! Oh dear. But the deadline was too near so I woke up very, very early on the Sunday morning and tried copying out every copy of the magazine. It certainly looked “different”, I’m sure it would have won an original art competition, unfortunately you couldn’t read hardly any of it! That sort of killed things off a bit as going back to black and white after all the hype wasn’t really on.
So, realise that technology always breaks and always have a back up plan!
Look at every way to create revenue from your product
When I set the price of the magazine I came up with 20p as it simply cost less than this to photocopy. Always allow a nice profit margin because there will always be extra costs you’ve never dreamed about. What I didn’t realise is that most magazines, back then at least, didn’t make most of their money from the cover price, but from advertising inside the magazine. If I had known this I could have gone round local business and sold adverts and made a lot more money.
This is the same with many businesses, they just “leave money on the table”. For example you could be creating more revenue by adding private advertisers to your site, writing a book, recommending other people’s services, creating a membership site etc. etc. The content is always the main thing, finding people’s needs and then satisfying them, but if the finances are tight then always keep an eye open for other ways to monetize what you do. Always read up on the biographies and business info of other people and companies. Find out how they make money. If you have a site or small business already, it might just be one simple idea that catapults you into the big revenue league!
It’s never too early or too late
Some of you will be reading this now and your subconscious will be making up excuses as to why you can’t live a location free lifestyle. It will be things like “Richard started when he was 13, I didn’t so I can’t do it” or “He had a head start before the internet came along, I’m too late now”. Ignore those. The best time to start up a business is always now! Imagine what I could have done with my games previews if I had had the internet. Well you don’t need to because there are hundreds of sites now making millions of dollars. Does that mean I should have waited? No, because I not only made a bit of money (a colour TV is a big thing for a 13 year old even if it is second hand) and helped out my friends (we all saved valuable gaming time by only buying the best games from each others recommendations!) you learn so much from just starting a business. Most people fail a couple of times, or more likely things just fizzle out, but that’s where you learn and those are the stepping stones to your much bigger success in the future! So get started. Now!